As our friends at Sex-And-Blogs describe the project:

"Select respondents were made-over with the help of hair stylists and make-up artists, and photographed in a glamour-style photo shoot. The resulting photos were also digitally retouched to help achieve the desired visual effect. Wearing then had the manipulated photographs transformed into unique—almost nostalgic—painted portraits."

It's an interesting concept, though it might have been even more interesting if the subjects who responded to Wearing's ad didn't already look like pin-up subjects to begin with. As soon as an artist comes along who comes up with a way to transform those of us with paunches and less-than-perfect boobs into classic pin-up material, we'll be taking off our clothes quicker than you can say "Andy Warhol".

• A Pin-Up Like You (sex-and-blogs.com)
• Gillian Wearing: "Pin Ups" (@ Regen Projects, Los Angeles, through August 23, 2008)

· Molly Crabapple (mollycrabapple.com)
· Arena Studios (arenastudios.com)
· Audacia Ray (wakingvixen.com)

- - -

· Museum of Sex (mosex.org)

· See also: "MoSEX Opening" (pleasurehappens.blogspot.com)

"Modified Eros" opens this Friday, November 9, at Arena Studios in New York City and runs until January 18. An opening reception will be held at Arena Studios on November 9 from 7-10pm.

· "Modified Eros" @ Arena Studios, NYC (exhibit info + more gallery info @ arenastudios.com)
· Bella Vendetta (bellavendetta.com)
· Audacia Ray (wakingvixen.com)

· "Sex in the Park, and Its Sneaky Spectators" (NY Times)
· Kohei Yoshiyuki: The Park (exhibition info and gallery @ yossimilogallery.com)

Previously: Inside Japan's Adult Treasure Expo, Tokyo Perve: Tokyo Underground Fetish Parties, Tabou: Photos by Tominari Tetsu, Japanese Fetish Club Tour, Tokyo Swingers, Tokyo Undressed

· "The Naked Portrait" (exhibition info @ nationalgalleries.org; see preview gallery here - via sexblo.gs)
Thumbnail: Jane Birkin (1969) by David Bailey

Previously: "Eloquent Nude": Edward Weston and Charis Wilson, World Museum Of Erotic Art, Sweatnapper: Modern Nude Ambrotypes, Touring London's Sex "Theme Park", Old Master Smut By David Nicholson

What do you get when you give a sex worker a dildo, a glue gun, sequins, paint, and a thread and needle? Art, of course! $pread magazine, the now two year old magazine by and for sex workers, is unveiling more than forty decorated (and mutilated) dildos as part of its second annual art exhibition Sex Worker Visions, curated by Fleshbot contributor Audacia Ray. Sex workers in Cleveland, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal and New York got together in their respective cities with craft supplies and dildos to make phallic creations that look like muppets, WMDs, and disco balls ... sometimes all at once. The larger show features a whole host of Fleshbot crush objects as well: Annie Sprinkle, Molly Crabapple, Zak Smith, and Vena Virago are all showing pieces about working in the sex industry. To top it all off, the exhibition is at Arena Studios, a working dungeon, so art fans can ponder whether that elaborate rack of paddles and pointy things is an installation piece or part of the decor.

· One Sex Worker Nation Under Dildo (Flickr)
· "Sex workers' art on display" (ny.metro.us)
· $pread Magazine (spreadmagazine.org)
· Sex Worker Visions II Info (opens tonight @ Arena Studios, 407 Broome Street, NYC)

Previously: 2007 Sex Workers' Art Show Tour, 2007 Seattle Erotic Art Festival, Sex Worker Podcast: Tow Truck Panties' RenegadeCast

About the only thing that gets us more excited than a citywide spectacle devoted to sexy art and culture is a website that greets us with the tantalizing words "SEXUAL CONTENT WARNING" in bold caps—and fortunately where this year's Seattle Erotic Art Festival is concerned, we don't have to settle for just one or the other. Alas, you'll have to go to Seattle yourself this weekend to check out what will be heating up the walls of the Fenix Performance Arts Theater in SODO since the festival organizers haven't yet posted any examples by the hundred or so artists whose work will be on display, but given the fact that nearly a dozen printers in the Seattle area refused to print the exhibition catalogue due to its explicit content, you can bet they'll be more than a few pieces that will be just the thing to perk up that chaste space above your sofa if you're so inclined.

· 2007 Seattle Erotic Art Festival (seattleerotic.org - thanks Jefe)
· Seattle Erotic Art Festival on MySpace (myspace.com)

· Thumbnail by 2006 and 2007 SEAF artist Erin Frost

Previously: World Museum Of Erotic Art, 2007 Sex Workers' Art Show Tour, "The Dirty Show", "Negative Exposure", "Peeping, Probing and Porn", Hot At Large, EroticArtists.org, "Eros In Modern Art", 100,000 Years of Sex, "Kink" @ Museum of Sex

There's nothing particularly dirty about the cherry-topped biomorphic floating nipple thingies and abstract vulvoids that figure prominently in the artwork by Buff Monster now on view at Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles, at least in the first couple of pieces on display in their online exhibition (and except for the fact that they're, like, nipples and vulvas.) The real fun happens when you scroll down the page and see those same objects disporting themselves amidst and on top of found porn ephemera like pages from vintage hardcore magazines and film stills and pinups of a naked Suzanne Somers (which we already have a space reserved for in the corridors of the Fleshbot Public Art Collection and Dildonics Research Institute if you were thinking of buying it for us.) Who knew being a cherry-topped biomorphic floating nipple thingie could be so much fun?

· Buff Monster: "One In The Pink" @ Gallery 1988 (nineteeneightyeight.com, via sexblo.gs)
· Buff Monster: Street art and paintings from Hollywood (buffmonster.com)

Previously: Porn Saints, Panty Paintings by John Kacere, Art by Victoria Van Dyke, Ray Beldner: Porn Art, John Currin @ Gagosian Gallery, Videos by Vulvax, Julie Andreoli: Pink Punk Art, Art In Sex, Unporn, Non Porn Zone, Deconstructed Beauty, Porno 3000, Porn Remixes

No, it's not a survey of our own career in the porn trenches (though on a hungover post-Super Bowl party Monday morning it certainly feels like we've been at it for that long): "100,000 Years of Sex", which opened last week at the Neanderthal Museum in Mettman, Germany, explores all things down and dirty over the last several millienia including the world's oldest condom (guess that one we've been keeping in our wallet since junior high school doesn't count) and various phallic-shaped devices made in the heady days before phthalates came along and made sticking things into your various holes even riskier than just having to deal with things like splinters and bone shards. And you thought there was really nothing new happening in the world of smut? Apparently, you had no idea.

· 100,000 Years of Sex (photo gallery @ spiegel.de, via sexblo.gs)
· "100,000 Years of Sex" (exhibition info @ neanderthal.de)

Previously: "Kink" @ Museum of Sex, Prague Sex Machines Museum, Oasis Bordello Museum, Marital Aid Test Kitchen: The Fucking Love Machine, "Peeping, Probing, and Porn"

While we've always loved checking out the exhibitions at New York City's Museum of Sex, we have to admit that our visits there have often been frustrating, what with all of those antique sex toys and skin mags tantalizingly displayed just out of our reach behind the plexiglass walls of their vitrines. So we're especially eager for the opening of guest curator and social anthropologist Katherine Gates' hands-on "KINK: Geography of the Erotic Imagination" in February, which according to the press release "will allow visitors to try on fetish costumes, climb into bondage furniture, and play with kinky props, all the while learning about the larger narrative themes that bind all human eroticisms together, from the most 'vanilla' to the most kinky." Whether or not it will also allow visitors a taste of the delights of cannibal fetishism remains to be seen; in any case, we hope they budgeted enough for plenty of antibacterial wipes and rubber gloves to last them for the duration of the show. Take it from us—that bondage furniture isn't always as easy to keep clean as you might think.

· "KINK: Geography of the Erotic Imagination to open" (artdaily.net; also spotted @ sexblo.gs)
· Museum of Sex (museumofsex.com)
· Katherine Gates' "Deviant Desires: Incredibly Strange Sex" (Amazon)
· Thumbnail via the inimitable Muki's Kitchen

Considering the fact that he's best known for his critically acclaimed paintings of "stupid women with big tits" you'd think we'd be bigger fans of John Currin, but despite all those quirky curves and remarkable technique we always felt like we were missing something about his work. Still, there are elements of several of the pieces in his current exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in New York City that we're definitely responding to. Could it be their increasingly refined brushwork? His subtle interplay between detailed observation and postmodern irony? Or maybe it's just the fact that a few of these paintings look like something Larry Flynt would have commissioned for the walls of the Sistine Chapel? We're so wowed by the painterly renditions of cock-stuffing (and so amused that they're likely to wind up hanging over the sofa in some big-ticket art collector's living room) that we can't quite make our usual art vs. porn jokes about them. Sometimes art just winds up in a class by itself.

· John Currin at Gagosian Gallery, Madison Avenue (gagosian.com)

See also:
· "What you need to know about John Currin" (Slate, 2003)
· "Currin Events/Money shots: Lasciviousness, voyeurism, and the inner life of paintings"> (John Currin exhibition review by Jerry Saltz @ Village Voice)

Since nothing whets our midday appetite like a nice helping of art-versus-porn ambiguity, we're glad to see that the Swiss at least seem to have the distinction down pat with the new Eros in Modern Art exhibition at the Fondation Bayeler in Basel, which opened this weekend and runs through next February, when it will move to the Kunstforum in Vienna. With more than 200 works on display from the collection of eminent collectors and gallerists Hildy and Ernst Beyeler, the show aims to portray "(a)n involvement with all forms and facets of eros—love, passion and lust, desire and sexual union ", with artworks that range from Egon Schiele's fetishy proto-upskirt drawings to Jeff Koons' sculptural ... er, whatever they are. And hey, they use the word "eros" in the title—so it must be art!

· "Eros in Modern Art" (beyeler.com; also spotted @ sexblo.gs)

Previously: "The Dirty Show", "Negative Exposure", "Peeping, Probing and Porn", Hot At Large, EroticArtists.org

There's high art and then there's toilet humor—and then there's a third category altogether, which is a delightfully perverse combination of both. Natalie Fabia's solo show "Ladies on the Loo," which opened last weekend at the Black Market Gallery in Los Angeles, would fall into the third category, with paintings of pretty and disheveled girls sitting on toilets. Sure, we've all seen fetish photographs featuring ladies indulging in these most intimate of moments before before. But stifle that yawn, because Natalie's work has a sense of humor and foxy ladies as well—or as she puts it, "peeing and pretty flowers!"
- AR

· Natalia Fabia (nataliafabia.com)
· Black Market Los Angeles (blackmarketla.com)

Previously: Hakan Photography, Fully Clothed Pissing

Detroiters (Detroitites?) are getting treated to two weekends in a row of filthy, sexy fun, those lucky bastards. (Maybe they need two weekends in a row to soak up all that masculinity?) This upcoming weekend is the Sex and So Much More expo, where you can buy lots of sexy stuff, or you can just hang around the booths and get pornstars like Tera Patrick and Ron Jeremy to sign your t-shirt, ticket stub, or whatever else you can get them to write on. (Tip: Ron really likes signing anyone with a nice rack.) Then you can hang around and watch the performances, which probably include the showing of boobs. And there will be much rejoicing.
- AR

· Sex and So Much More (sexandsomuchmore.com)

Previously: The Dirty Show, Fetish and Fine Art Workshop, "Negative Exposure", "Peeping, Probing and Porn", Hot At Large

Italian film auteur Tinto Brass might be best known to North American audiences for his directorial credit on the much-maligned 1979 star-studded porn disaster "Caligula", but since the early 1960s he's been creating glossy erotic mini-masterpieces that generally don't get seen much outside of Europe. Visitors to Venice's Museo d'Arte Erotica can now enjoy a space dedicated to Brass and his "poetic and cinematic world", which we're told focuses mainly on "extolling in all its glory, the human bottom" and which includes previously unseen clips and behind-the-scenes photos from some of the most important works in his oeuvre. In case you can't make it to Venice or find such signature Brass works as "Monella" and "Snack Bar Budapest" at your local Blockbuster, the illustrated videography and generous stills galleries on Brass' official website will help you get an idea of what you've been missing all these years. Maybe it's time to give "Caligula" another look? (Actually, scratch that—it really is as bad as we Remember. Sorry, Tinto.)

· Tinto Brass (tintobrass.to, via sexblo.gs)
· "Tinto Brass's hitherto unpublished work now displayed in the Museo d'Arte Erotica" (museodarteerotica.it)

Previously: Francesco Vezzoli's "Caligula", 70s Spanish Film Posters, "Caligula" Gallery

Before it gets too cold for bare boobs, Detroit is having three day long erotic art extravaganza, The Dirty Show. Actually, judging from the antics at last February's Dirty Show, Detroit boobs feel no pain, which hopefully means that in the balmy September weather the hijinks will be even hotter. Oh right, and then there's the art &mdashlyup, its dirty all right, with lots of cocks and cunts and tied up bodies. It's so hard to know where to look, what with all that explicit dirtiness on the walls and living boobiness in the room. Oh, the dilemmas of an art opening ...
- AR

· The Dirty Show (exhibition info @ dirtydetroit.com)

Previously: "Negative Exposure", "Peeping, Probing and Porn", Hot At Large, EroticArtists.org